


Reunion

by hotskytrotsky



Category: Orphan Black
Genre: Abortion, Flashback, Gen, Pregnancy, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-11-05 06:02:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11007486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotskytrotsky/pseuds/hotskytrotsky
Summary: "Have you ever had an abortion?""Yes."Prequel to the Orphan Black series. Seventeen-year-old Sarah rekindles ties with her family during a very bad time.





	Reunion

**Author's Note:**

> This work was written after the Season 2 finale aired. I actually haven't watched anything past Season 2 yet, so things may no longer be canon/in-character.

               Growing up, she’d had no family. She was angry and alone, and took her loneliness to the streets where it became toughness, which in turn begot respect. She’d then been adopted by a family of thugs and truants and users, corner boys who called her “sis” and sold to her on discount. Blood tied them together - literally. It was blood for blood, favors exchanged, and the threat of giving a name to someone who could find you no matter how far you fled. But. Well, it was a family, however conditional.

               It had been after _that_ particular adventure when Sarah realized that blood did not a family make, and nor did a threat hanging over her head. She needed a ride. You weren’t allowed to drive after. Frank was working at the convenience store and couldn’t ditch his shift. Ed and his girl had left town with something bad on their tail.

               “Danny,” she said, hushed, into her expensive phone, the one lifted from a girl on the bus with a Starbucks in one manicured hand. She used to feel bad. That time, she had not. “Danny, where you at?”

She was living with a girl now, which was nice. It was nice not to have eyes following her around, to be conscious of her underwear both on and off her body. But Nica brought home guys a lot, so Sarah spent many a night walking around, smoking cig after cig and waiting for the clock to tick late enough that she could crash on her own damn couch without having to block out the sighs and squishes. It had been one of those nights. Her head throbbed with exhaustion in the early morning sunshine. Her skin felt like pale paper, like it might burst into flames in the light of day.

“In bed, woman,” came Danny’s gruff voice. “You should be in yours. Better yet, in mine.”

“Not now, you slag,” said Sarah. “I need a ride to the clinic.”

“What? Why?”

She sighed. “Why do you think?”

“Sarah, Sarah, Sarah,” he cajoled. She suddenly did wish she was in his bed, if only so she could punch him in the face. “Don’t do this.”

“I gotta.”

“Did you, like, really think it through and all?”

“Danny. Come on.”

“I’m not taking you,” Danny declared with a note of finality. “My bed’s still warm. Piss off.”

“You piss off!” Sarah cried with all the sophistication of a child, but he had already hung up.

There were many, many contacts in her phone. Almost none of them were under their real names. Sometimes initials, sometimes nicknames. Little Queenie. Sideburns. Some guy. Nerdface. She didn’t like identifying details in her phone. And people didn’t tend to give out their legal, not in her crowd.

There were many, many contacts in her phone. But she could call none of them.

Usable space in her brain was not ample. Sarah kept her mind full of debts owed and called in, angles of corners and the locations of fire escapes, the convenience store owners who got high on the job. There was no room for memorizing numbers, not more than a few. But this one she’d had on the back-burner of her brain for a long, long time.

“Oi,” said the man on the other end of the line. It had been a long time since she’d last called. Her number had changed - different distracted girl on the bus, different Starbucks. “Who is it?”

In spite of herself, Sarah sighed with relief to hear a familiar voice. He sounded a little more Canadian each time she called.

“Fe,” she said. “Fe, I need a favor.”

“Of course you do,” said he resignedly. “Jesus Christ on a popsicle stick, Sarah. It’s been a whole bloody year.”

“Yeah, I, I…” she had no explanations. “Look, I need a ride to the clinic.”

What could she give him in exchange? Money? She couldn’t afford his hourly rate. Sex? No good among family, and he was gayer than a feather boa, besides. Drugs? She’d distributed everything but her last few grams of the good stuff, the really clean blow, and that she was saving for consolations after her procedure.

She’d have to pay it forward, she supposed. She hated taking out loans.

“Alright. You still in Ontario?” he asked.

“Look, Fe, I promise you a couple free lines next time I get…” Sarah’s mouth slowly stilled as her foster brother’s words registered. “What?”

“Are. You. Still. In. Ontario. Dumbo?”

She said, frozenly, “Yeah. You’re. You’re actually gonna do it?”

“Of course,” said Felix. “You’re my sister. A sister I haven’t seen in about a million years, but hey.”

“But -“

“Besides,” he mocked. “I’m too young to be Uncle Felix. It doesn’t sound right.”

Sarah leaned back against the bricks and grinned a broad, giddy grin, spitting out her current location through gleaming teeth. She let the phone rest against her cheek even after the connection beeped to a close. It felt good, she realized. To have a brother who didn’t want payment. To know that he had her back, no matter how much she fucked up. That was family. Fuck Danny and Nica and all the rest.

But oh, he’d better keep his mouth shut about today. Mrs. S would actually flay her alive.

What actually happened was that Mrs. S gave her a gigantic, stifling, wrap-around-scarf of a hug and a cup of steaming tea, and she didn’t even pause to ask what had brought Sarah back. After that came the equally-scalding lecture and smack across the jaw. Then followed more hugs and a bustle about her old bedroom with her arms full of sheets and pillowcases because, well, Sarah was back, and she’d be damned if she let her slip away without spending the night.

Spend the night she did. And the next, and the one after that. She wound up staying a few months, until the domesticity started to weigh on her eardrums and Mrs. S began asking if she was going to re-enroll in school and get her bloody diploma.

But it was nice. It was nice to be seventeen and have a mother to sweep your hair out of your eyes when you came down with fever, to have a brother to crack jokes at your expense. Even if she couldn’t take it in large doses. Even when she escaped back to her natural habitat, the streets were a little less lonely, knowing she had a family to return to. Just in case. A family that was unconditional, that required no payment and kept track of no debts.   


End file.
